Postimpressionism, or, Art Therapy
by vifetoile89
Summary: They say the physician ought to heal herself, so Dr. Ziegler paints in her spare time. Romance-heavy drabbles featuring Angela/Fareeha, Angela/Genji, and Angela/Moira.


Disclaimer: I don't own Overwatch, I don't own the characters, I'm just a Mercy main with an overactive imagination. If you like the story, please consider leaving a review and recommending it to friends. Thanks, enjoy!

00000

Doctor Angela Ziegler spent every moment of her day in a crowd. Work at the hospital, checking in with her friends in the cafeteria, then reviewing the latest laboratory results. Doing her rounds from patient to patient, smiling and taking their hands and being the strong, kind doctor that they needed. In surgery, in laboratory, overseeing physical therapy, never alone.

At the Overwatch Watchpoints, the crowd seemed to travel with her. Firing range, sparring ground, tech labs and biometric labs and it never ended, and if her smile faded it always came back quickly, because she was Dr. Ziegler and her people depended on her and her days were full and ordered, A to Z.

Come home to her small apartment. Close the door behind her with a sigh. Darkness, silence, solitude. Hers.

Wherever she went, her living spaces took on her details over time. A stack of library paperbacks by her bed, stories for just one month, one city. Her favorite portable lamps, a calendar always set to show February and Aquarius (her Zodiac sign), and her dearest trinkets, all of which could fit into one generous purse.

Her kitchen was always stacked with coffee and mugs. The table was an odd sight: one half was empty and neat, where she ate or worked or journaled. But the other side of the little table was given over to canvases, no bigger than twelve inches across, if that, and finger-sized tubes of paint, a few palettes, brushes, etc.

On her off days, or quiet mornings, or when she came home too wired and frazzled and needed to decompress and fit into her own head again—when she could, Angela Ziegler painted.

Now, don't get any big ideas. Her best painting never really expanded horizons. But that was the thing. It was nice to have an area of her life where she didn't have to excel, she didn't even have to be average. Sometimes she painted the view outside her window, however urban and grey. Sometimes she did dinky portraits of people she knew. Often she went into abstraction. She experimented liberally with color, and had learned a few good ways of blending and swirling colors that pleased her very much. Sometimes her paintings became gifts to local friends, before she moved yet again. She was, it seemed to her, always on the move.

00000

Fareeha Amari lived her life in color. She wore sunlit colors when out of uniform—a scarlet beret, emerald-green boots tucked under grey trousers, a secondhand coat in sapphire damask. By day or neon-lit night, she strode confidently ahead, full of energy. Perhaps it was a warrior's resolve, knowing death as an old rival, one who stayed away only for now. Fareeha ate with relish, stretched languorously, loved passionately, all live and in living color.

Angela loved her for all that. When they walked arm in arm, hand in hand, some of Fareeha's exuberance and shine passed to Angela, as though through osmosis.

And like a titanium white set alongside a cool grey, Fareeha's presence reshaped who Angela was, or at least how she acted. Angela fell into the role of the steadier one, the deadpan one, the reliable and sane and clever and kind one, while Fareeha got to make mistakes, charge ahead, make clumsy jokes, follow her feelings. All of which was fine, for all of that was the province of youth, which Fareeha had in abundance.

But sometimes Angela wondered, What does Fareeha see, when she looks at me?

Sometimes Angela thought, I spend enough time playing the angel as it is.

There came one night when Angela should have been asleep, resting for once, but she couldn't get comfortable in Fareeha's arms. She slunk out, took a shower, sat out on the balcony, and finally set up a quick painting station. In near-complete silence, she dabbed color.

She warmed up her hand by swirling warm greys onto the canvas, like clouds, mellow and gentle. Then, a stroke of cobalt blue, forceful and direct.

The cobalt was a beautiful color, a young color somehow. It reminded her of Fareeha—maybe that's why her hand had reached for it. Fareeha, for all her experience as a leader and strategist, was so young.

Angela sometimes felt like she had double vision. Fareeha was looking more and more like her mother, vanished, long-ago-far-away Ana, as time passed.

And when Angela looked in her own mirror—outwardly she remained young, her skin was taut, her bones were strong, she breathed easily. Her medical advances proved themselves beautifully on her own body. But in the mirror, she saw an older woman. There was a weariness carried in her soul.

She was old enough to be Fareeha's mother, and that was that.

Angela filled the bottom third of the canvas with green. Twining vines, little curls and leaves, twisting together with the intricacy and familiarity of years. And thorns. A dark green created shadows, the impression of depth. She halted a moment, remembering a trip to the ancient forests of Europe, the primeval forests where witches lurked and ghosts moaned.

She cleaned her brush and filled it up with yellow. On the surface of the vines she planted little yellow flowers, sweet and friendly, warm, there for everyone to enjoy.

She sat back, and rubbed a hand on her smock. She saw a cobalt bird, escaping a nest of thorns and snares. No matter how sweet it looked from outside, it was still a briar patch.

"Angela? Come to bed," Fareeha called from the next room.

"Just a sec, liebchen," Angela replied, taking her brush and water cup to the sink. She scrubbed at her hands, as she would in surgery, as she would before speaking at a conference. For just a moment she paused, and closed her eyes while water ran over her hands.

I have to end this, before Fareeha comes to regret it.

It would be bitter, but most medicines were.

00000

Angela spent two weeks in Tokyo for an important bio-engineering conference. Technically, she was supposed to be alone. Technically, Genji Shimada's movements were classified, and controlled, and by no means was the Blackwatch agent supposed to be in Tokyo. Technically, he and Angela only knew each other as passing acquaintances.

Technically.

Evening of the first night of the conference, Angela walked into her hotel room and found Genji inside, meditating in front of her window, divested of helmet and most of his exosuit.

Angela crossed to him, and as she almost toppled him over with kisses, she reflected that she loved to keep a secret such as him.

The secret kept her smiling as she went downstairs to get some tea for the morning. When she and Genji entwined at midnight, the fact that he was a secret kept her quiet where she would otherwise yelp or moan—clandestine and forbidden and delightful for all that. The secret put a spring in her step the next morning, down to breakfast with her colleagues, to discuss very serious matters in a very serious tone but she was sure her eyes sparkled. She went back up to her room to change, and Genji greeted her, asked if she was well, and then said, "You paint?"

Japanese hotel rooms, she learned, were admirably compact and rather small and difficult places to keep a secret.

Angela had already set up a makeshift art station in the bathroom. She was flustered, but Genji did not push her. He asked about her art in a tone of mild admiration, always respecting how she may feel.

That evening, after they had showered, she massaged him, working lotion and salve into the craggy landscape of his skin. In the silence, Angela said, surprising even herself, "Genji, would you like to paint with me?"

"What?" he asked, turning to her. "Paint what?"

"The canvases, Genji."

"I'm not practiced in painting. You wouldn't mind?"

"No, it would be fun, I think." She smiled at him, and that wore down the last of his resistance.

She did insist that he wear a smock and gloves. The joints and wiring of his prosthetic hands were so delicate that Angela didn't want to risk even the tiniest chip of acrylic sneaking into the works. And the smock, well, it would just be undignified if Genji turned up at the next Blackwatch assignment and had dabs of sunny colors down his front.

Genji asked at the start of their first session,"Can I draw on the canvas? Just lay down some guidelines?"

"Of course! But draw lightly—" she handed him a pencil –"otherwise your lines will always show through the paint. Do you draw?"

"A little."

Genji frequently used understatement when referring to his own past. Angela quietly prepared herself to see the Sistine Chapel ceiling bloom under his hand.

She put off her own daubing to watch. In his hand, the pencil flew over the canvas like a breeze, the gentlest caresses leaving tiny traces of grey that added up, turning into feathers, a beak, wings. Angela leaned over for a better look.

He was drawing a little bird, maybe a sparrow. It wasn't bad, though the proportions were a little creative.

"I like it!" Angela said. Genji nodded to show he'd heard, but no other acknowledgment.

The funny-looking birdy was colored over the course of the next two days—sky blue background, beautifully speckled and stippled brown feathers. A little menagerie started to grow, inspired by animals Genji had spotted on his walks around Tokyo. A ginger cat, a little toy cow outside an ice cream shop, a lion with wings. As he went on, the animals became more and more peculiar, out-of-place—a dolphin with jaguar spots, a jellyfish wearing an emperor's hat, a polka-dotted Corgi dog. Angela thought they were excellent, and told him so. He worked quickly, both because that's what fast-drying acrylics demanded, and because he was impatient, wanted to work through his awkward phase.

On day five he spent a lot of time laboring over one work. When he permitted Angela to see it, a serene portrait of Zenyatta, Genji's teacher whom she had never met, gazed back at her.

"It is very good," she said. "You even picked out the reflections on the steel."

"It is clumsy," he said, his arms folded.

"But it a likeness. I think I know Zenyatta a little better now."

Genji gave a hmph. Angela dropped the matter.

The next evening, when she returned—considering how she had to dress and behave for the banquet tonight—Genji was regarding his canvas again.

She crossed the room for a better look. It was another portrait of Zenyatta, from the chest up, and Genji had painted himself in armor next to him. They appeared to be in the Himalayas, and—"Oh, very clever, Genji!" Their chrome shoulders, glinting with white, blended with the mountains behind them, at once in the foreground and background, transient and rusting but also eternal.

"I was trying to make an optical illusion," said Genji.

"It's very good."

"It needs more work."

"Well, obviously yes—" Genji gave her a look for that, and maybe she deserved it—"but this is very interesting, and as you work you can make it better and better."

"Thank you. I will come back to this idea. It wouldn't leave me alone."

Angela pressed a hand into his shoulder and left, chatting that she needed to get ready. When she emerged from the hotel bathroom, her face freshly made-up and lovely, Genji was sitting at the head of the bed.

"That optical illusion," he said, as if to himself.

"I'm sure there's a learning curve to it. We can find books or guides," Angela said to him.

"If art is an expression of the soul, the illusion expresses mine—and yours."

Angela paused a moment, standing before the mirror. "That's interesting," she said. "Could you help me with this necklace?"

Genji got up. The topaz and silver of her necklace nearly vanished in his metal hand. As he fastened it around her neck, he went on, "The impossible is where we live. We live on the knife's edge, the paradox space. It's the only place for the likes of us." His cold fingers grazed her shoulders. "Actually, 'live' may be the wrong word."

"You're getting philosophical, that means it's time for you to eat."

He glanced at her reflection. "My blade is the sword, but yours is the scalpel. We both use them to bring the impossible into the world. But we'll pay for it, one day."

She laid her fingers on his. "I've never heard you talk like this. But I like it. The art is doing you good."

"Dr. Ziegler—"

"You're not wrong, Genji," Angela said, "but I don't have the time to think about that now."

A muffled huff of laughter. "When will you?" he asked. But she had already moved on.

00000

Moira O'Dearain was a damned nuisance. Her mess, her methodology or rather lack thereof, her snickers and snide remarks muttered sotto voce, her arrogance and dismissal of anyone that wasn't on her level, her impatient manner, sometimes verging on spoilt, and of course she was more than a little diabolically evil.

Angela could breathe easily around her.

When Moira acted like a little snot, Angela got to call her out, yell at her, show the entire Overwatch Research Department that Dr. Ziegler was not all sugar and light. When Moira casually tossed ethics out the window, Angela reeled them back in and voilà, she was the pillar of morality. Their methods clashed and complemented each other. When they got to tossing ideas around, they started talking faster and faster, over each other, new ideas caroming off of old ones, until this leads to that and but what about and I tell you it might work and that's insane, let's try it then you had some really good results, or at least terrific ideas. And that was all around other people. Don't even get me started on what they were like alone together.

In Fareeha's eyes, Angela was an angel. In Genji's eyes, Angela was a sorceress. In Moira's eyes, Angela was a weirdo and a total mess, and a kindred spirit.

Why did they attract so closely, so immediately? Moira had her affectations to keep people at bay. Angela kept her inner circle closely guarded. And to their mutual bafflement, they made an exception for each other.

Picture this. A knock at Moira's apartment door. Angela stood there, buttoned up against winter chill, with a bag of fresh Thai takeaway in one hand. As Angela glided in, chatting, Moira chided, "You didn't have to get food, there's plenty to eat here."

"I saw the state of your fridge last time," Angela replied, taking off her boots. "You need to clear that out or submit that milk to a laboratory."

Moira, unwrapping the food, said sharply, "I don't comment on the state of your flat."

"That's because my flat is clean."

"Oh, yes, the impeccable Angela, so far above us mortals."

"Don't take that tone with me—"

"Prancing about with your angel wings—"

"Because I'm right."

"You're horrible," Moira said, and by now Angela had hung up her coat, and Moira caught her by the waist and smooched her temple, ear, hair, until Angela was laughing. Moira said, "You've got everyone else fooled, but not me."

"Evil to her whom evil thinks," Angela retorted.

"That is, first of all, utter bull," Moira said, now getting out whiskey and the premade tamarind simple syrup, "second of all, you just want to sound clever, and third of all, it won't work on me because that's feckin' British bull."

Armed with Thai food and whiskey to soothe any burned tongues, they would settle on the couch, draped over one another, and Moira would pull up some horror movie from bygone days. Some nights, she selected a genuinely blood-curdling classic, something to promote cuddling and ice cream afterwards. But usually they favored something dated, with bad special effects and even worse acting. Horror with a medical bent was a particular favorite subgenre.

The Vanishing Skeleton was tonight's gem. The mad doctor's den of nightmares was clearly set in an active hospital—in fact, a maternity ward, as the room was lined with a print of dancing, happy monkeys. The hapless ingénue had been cast more for her cup size than her acting range—Angela said that the brassiere truly carried the film, and Moira almost fell off the couch laughing. Best of all, the possessed skeleton that stalked the characters and killed them each off, gruesomely and inventively, was always preceded by the sound of maracas, maracas in full flamenco mode, no less.

Maybe it was the notion of dance, or legs, or bones, that lingered after the credits rolled. Angela and Moira sat at opposite ends of the couch—it was a hot night in Gibraltar, not conducive to cuddling. Their bare legs were loosely tangled, knee over knee, legs extended. The whiskey was starting to wear off, and Moira was talking—venting, really, about their coworkers. She didn't need an audience, not really.

In this mood, Angela was playing with a hematite anklet that dangled from Moira's leg.

"You don't strike me as the type to wear body jewelry," Angela said, when Moira paused for breath.

"Oh, sometimes. I've got the nice legs, suits a bit of frill. Let me see, it was back when I was an adjunct that I really got in the habit. Someone gave me an anklet with little bells on, and before long I had my students trained, Pavlov-style. They hear the jingling of the bells—" she grinned wolfishly—"they knew I was coming, and they dreaded my approach. And then, of course, if I took the bracelet off I could sneak up on them. They hated that…" She laughed, and fell into silent memory for a little bit. "Dr. Ziegler, are you enamored of my shapely ankles?"

Angela looked up at her. "I have an idea. Next time, we'll meet at my place."

00000

Next time arrived. The doorbell rang, and Angela answered the door.

"Wilkommen, so good to see you M—" the name died on Angela's lips as she took in the sight of Moira. "Are you. You're wearing shorts."

"They're capris, Dr. Ziegler, I happen to have long legs." Angela had never seen Moira look bashful. "You explained your idea and I thought, something like this would suit. Besides, it's summer."

"Wish you'd told me ahead of time, you look darling!" Angela said, pulling her into the apartment.

"I don't want to look darling."

"Too bad!"

Grumble grumble, went Moira.

Angela had covered her floor with a drop cloth. She had set up pots of paints, cups of water, brushes (all mostly small), and some damp rags for cleanup.

"And a touch of this—" Angela handed Moira a brandy snifter, complete with brandy.

"Slainte," Moira said, before they'd even toasted. "And what's this for?"

"You said you don't draw."

"That's true. Consider yourself warned."

"Well, I don't agree. Everyone can draw. It's just a matter of practice, and learning to let go of self-criticism—learning to enjoy the process. So I thought some liquid courage would help you out."

With a visible effort, Moira saved herself from rolling her eyes. "Sure, and it's a damn good thing you're so pretty. I wouldn't put up with this from anyone else."

A compliment from Pharah would have won a beatific (maybe a little patronizing) smile; a compliment from Genji would have been answered with another (because he was still a patient, he was still healing, and kind words could only help, or so Angela told herself). But a compliment from Moira? Angela gave a devilish smile and commanded her to drink.

Angela bent over Moira's bared leg. In her hand was a paintbrush loaded with blue. "It was that skeleton movie that gave me the idea."

"That so?"

"The human body, even if it's taken apart, skeleton from muscles and et cetera—it's beautiful, each part balancing and connecting to each other, each system supporting the next. Marvelous complexity. And it was the sight of your tendon, your ankle… You have beautiful bones. I wondered if I could accentuate that beauty… do something with it. Just to try."

"I do believe in trying new things," Moira admitted. "Alright, could you bring that pot of yellow into my reach?"

"That's the spirit. Anyway, it's just water-based paints, not going to last forever." Angela happened to glance up as she said that, and met Moira's eyes. The little smile on Angela's face faded off, as if that last phrase hung tangibly in the air between them.

"Well." It was Moira who spoke first. "What does last forever? Wait." She narrowed her eyes. "I'm talking to the Resurrectionist herself."

"I don't like that nickname," Angela reminded her testily. Moira responded by bending down and planting a quick kiss on Angela's knee. "Moira?"

"Yes, Angela?"

"I'm glad you're here now."

"I'm glad, too. Even if you do have the weirdest ideas."

That brought out a grin—challenging but also totally at ease. "Oh, come on. Let's make some art."


End file.
